I see OP has not played Black Flag, or Rogue...

Valhalla BLOWS!

1) Combat is clunky
2) Stealth SUCKS
3) Assassinations SUCK
4) Warm weather, still wearing "Viking" crud that would OVERHEAT/KILL you
5) River Raiding, do one, rinse repeat....Not worth the effort
6) Repetitive Questing
7) Gear Sets/Bonus's Suck for Build Making
To Few "BOSS" Mobs
9) Getting Stuck On Everything
10) AI is so dumb, after a point you breeze through them
11) Story Line...Meh! BORING!!!
12) Weapon Choices...To Few!
13) "VILLAGE" upgrading...BORING!
14) Combat is clunky
15) Stealth SUCKS


Or right, already said that....

Game is so boring I stopped after the second section/zone/what ever it's called....

Rinse repeat, boring game play...

Remover "ASSASSIN" from the title and just call it:

Viking: Valhalla

Because THIS IS NOT Assassin's Creed...

It's a cruddy hack n slash skinned in Viking Garb....

Ubitard, this makes the ANOTHER swing and a miss game you've released....

Hope you do better....

FYI, don't even get me started on that POS called Division 2....

@ken_koerperich 100% with all you wrote.

Add to that: it's a game about WOKings, not Vikings, with African northmen and non-binary nevrosis in IXth century England/Ireland.
Disgusting, ugly, unrealistic and thus immersion killing.
Stay tuned, if Ubisoft makes an AC in medieval Japan, we'll surely have Swedish and Russian samurais.

Oh... and you go north and the PICTS are speaking a different dialect, yet during the MSQ, they suddenly start speaking ENGLISH with a SCOTTISH accent!! Go figure.

On top of all the previously mentioned... Eivor calls Dwolfg "my boy" when it was clearly stated during the quest that the wolf is a FEMALE!!

How about those Cairns? Wait, why is Varin suddenly voiced by adult Eivor?!? What happened to the voice actor who did Varin's voice during the intro cut scene?!? It totally throws you off because you hear adult Eivor speaking and the text says "Varin".

There was so very little attention to detail during this game's creation!! I never found ANY of these types of things with Odyssey, NONE... it really goes to show huge difference between the quality of professionalism and talent between the two studios!! Sure glad Quebec is making the next installment, I expect to be as flawless as Odyssey... and make this continue to look worse, if that's even possible.

I never found ANY of these types of things with Odyssey, NONE...

Me neither.
Odyssey remained almost pure to those modern nevrosis.
Valhalla jumped with its tow feet into wokism and political correctness until nausea.

It's quite interesting that UBI told it's investors that Valhalla is it's second highest grossing game... pushing Odyssey into third... I find this hard to believe unless they are already counting future revenue into this scenario. I just have trouble seeing how this game, with all it's bugs and glaring issues, could be so popular. Although reading Metacritic reviews, I'm astounded how many more reviews, positive reviews, there are vs Odyssey. Having played both for over 100 hours... 180 to completion on Valhalla and over 300 hours on Odyssey... I just don't get it. Honestly, people talk about how "beautiful" Valhalla is... say what? The place is DREARY and DEPRESSING vs the epic vistas and amazing landscapes of Odyssey. In Valhalla, you are constantly tripping over dead bodies, horrific scenes of torture and mutilation... and this, to some people, is "beautiful"?!? Sure, I've come across a few locations in Valhalla that are really amazing, but they are few compared to Odyssey.

I also cannot fathom how people can enjoy the constant "puzzles" that are thrown at us... I just want to play the game... not have to spend most of my time trying to figure out how to get a treasure chest, how to complete Fly Agaric, Standing Stones, Cairns... or what the heck they are wanting me to do in these dumb "world events". I don't play games to THINK... I play games to relax and NOT think... and Odyssey was great with that. I do, however, enjoy the Treasure of Britain caves just as I enjoyed the Tombs in Odyssey.

Just to continue... so with UBI telling their investors they expect to have a large amount of revenue coming from Valhalla in their quarter 4 (which is quarter 1 of next year), exactly WHERE do they expect this high amount of revenue to come from? In an interview in July, the post launch director stated that "any future content would be free"... so this leaves the question of where will this new revenue be coming from?!? Perhaps he was overruled, and yet, I see other comments in both Youtube and Reddit stating that they will never pay for any additional content for Valhalla due to the extremely tiny DLCs we received with our paid Season Pass. I, for one, will not pay for any content that involves the poorly done (IMO) Asgard arc. I completed the first Asgard quest and was do disappointed that I never went back for the second... so I definitely won't be paying for the third. I honestly was OK with the Ireland and France DLCs- they at least got us new weapons... yet... getting them at 'end game' and without having NG+, there isn't much content left to enjoy them with. If this is UBI's 'experiment' with "game as a service" I'd say it's a MAJOR fail!!

@adarklore Odyssey definitely did game as a service much better ..... The ability to win most of the store items just by playing and doing the weekly Ori quests is what kept me coming back plus lots of stuff to do after you completed the 3 main quest lines ...... I have every piece available from the store and actually only bought 10 single pieces to complete armor sets and since I did it when they had a sale I only paid $9.98 out of pocket .... I won every weapon, every Phobos skin, every ship skin, every crew, every figurehead and every ship Lt just by playing the game ..... Valhalla I think I got 2 store pieces from Reda and since you have to outright buy them instead of having gift jars there is likely no way in hell I'll every complete even one set much less all available sets like I did in Odyssey. I finished the game a few weeks ago and haven't went back since because there is nothing compelling to make me want to continue playing and I don't feel the Season Pass is worth more than 20-25 bucks because of all the bugs and crashing. I bought Elder Scrolls Online complete edition (meaning with all the DLCs) for less than $40 and there is enough content there for several hundred hours of play and I'll be going to that as soon as I finish my third playthrough of Witcher 3 which with the 66 Mods I added looks better than Valhalla IMO. Plays a lot better too with no crashes and only a couple of bugs which a reload fixed with a minor loss of wasted time.

Just to continue... so with UBI telling their investors they expect to have a large amount of revenue coming from Valhalla in their quarter 4 (which is quarter 1 of next year), exactly WHERE do they expect this high amount of revenue to come from?

I think its from all the unicorns and fire swords they sell in the store. I suspect there's a subset of players for whom money is no object and just gobble up whatever ubi puts out. I mean, there's a reason the store packs come out regularly without fail; while at the same time, the game is a year old and there's still a bug where you can be launched into the air and die. I bet they get real support too, not this faux one.

@lemmie88 Let alone several times I've tried to jump from something and get stuck 'fall in air' and then desync!! I have completed at least TWO forts (not during a quest) and went to jump clear after completing them, only to get stuck falling in air, then having to reload and, because the game doesn't save WHILE you're in a red zone, had to do the entire fort over again!! INFURIATING. I mean seriously, why can't the game at least AUTO SAVE during a red zone, for this exact reason?!?

Just read an article titled "Ubisoft Announces Pay Raises To Stop Developers From Leaving". Part of the article stated, "They’re desperately trying to hold on to what few experienced devs are still here,” one current developer in the Canadian studios told Kotaku."

"Sources tell Kotaku that Ubisoft has been bleeding top-level talent for the past couple years. In addition to the allegations that came out in 2020, these departures have also come as part of a general wave of resignations throughout the global pandemic, and as competitions for talent ramp up among companies like Google, Facebook, and Riot Games, and Tencent.
 
Montreal has been a particular hotbed for new opportunities in game development. A scene which Ubisoft helped jump start thanks to generous government tax subsidies back in the late ‘90s is now home to dozens of studios belonging to companies like EA, Amazon, Bethesda, and Gearbox, as well as tons of new independent startups, many of which have drawn veteran talent directly from Ubisoft. As Axios reported earlier this year, long-time Assassin’s Creed directors Darby McDevitt, Eric Baptizat, and Raphael Lacoste all left the company for other studios in the span of just a few months."

So it appears that Montreal (the studio responsible for Valhalla), has been bleeding talent for awhile now... so I guess it explains WHY Valhalla is in the state that it's in... which IMO doesn't bode well for fixes or decent content for the remainder of Valhalla's life cycle.

People learned many things about themselves and what they do and don’t like during the lockdowns, among them that loyalty is a one way thing. All that stuff about office “perks” was just designed to massage egos and distract you from your wage and work/life balance. They learned that they actually like working remotely, that there really is no purpose or value to most middle management, that endless meetings are for said middle managers to justify their time more than for the workers for whom it’s just an time and energy waste, also that companies care more about optics than actual issues or individuals.

If Ubisoft want to keep high level talent then they have to evolve. If this is the case then what they’re doing now isn’t working, so change what you do. It’s doubtful it’s only about the money, though I’m sure that’s a major factor, but employees have to feel valued. That it’s not a competition. The environment has to feel positive, not toxic. The people that deserve it should rise. Not the people who just suck up the most (that’s a sign of weak leadership needing ego massaging and neither in contact with nor able to discern who or what adds real value), then they should be used for what they do best not merely placed in roles that are higher up but that they have no valid experience or skills for. People want honesty, not excuses from management.

So Ubisoft need to really look deep at what’s wrong, engender an environment where honesty is possible and people can express themselves in ways that aren’t necessarily comfortable or politically correct, but that allow them to fix what’s wrong and make their proposition inviting enough to retain their talent.

@adarklore I was saying this almost a year ago, you could just tell and as I said back then top level talent in any of the Tech fields doesn't put up with a lot of bull from management, if they feel they are being abused they just go somewhere else because they can. It's called Brain Drain amongst Engineers. I suspect some of the losses have come from the people who wrote and maintained the AnvilNext game engine which is why they can't fix the bugs. Using a game engine to develop a game is one thing but actually creating and maintaining a game engine itself is a whole other level. It's like designing a system to use a CPU is a whole lot easier than the skill it takes to actually design a CPU. CPU design takes a good understanding of how Particle Physics works at the atomic level.

@lemmie88 Let alone several times I've tried to jump from something and get stuck 'fall in air' and then desync!! I have completed at least TWO forts (not during a quest) and went to jump clear after completing them, only to get stuck falling in air, then having to reload and, because the game doesn't save WHILE you're in a red zone, had to do the entire fort over again!! INFURIATING. I mean seriously, why can't the game at least AUTO SAVE during a red zone, for this exact reason?!?

Yes, for a game with tons of progression-stopping bugs, where the workaround is invariably to load an older save, its still chock-full of save restricted areas. And if you try to bring it up, they will separate the two issues and say one is working as intended, and the other will just get you the runaround blaming your files/hardware/connection/etc.

On the brain drain topic, I actually just had an article come up in my feed, "Ubisoft Employee Group Launches New Petition After None of Its Demands Were Met" https://www.ign.com/articles/ubisoft-employee-group-new-petition
It seems 100 days after the letter from the employee group, there was no change. In combination with the pay raise article, it sounds like hush money! Like, we'd rather just throw money at it than actually change our ways.

@capnkel There's nothing that impressive about the norse time in britain, they're just one more group in a series of invaders/conquerers/boat people/refugees/settlers, that left a footprint. Then the british would later go on & dish out the same crap to other nations around the world. There's nothing great, or impressive about any of it.

Well said, this is exactly what I was thinking but could never put it into words.

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I do not own ACV and after reading many comments in this forum and countless YT vids it looks more and and more unappealing to me so now I wont bother with it. Im playing Odyssey atm and find the game mechanic very very boring. Theres only so much "Kill camp commander 0/1, Loot treasure 0/2 , find tablet 0/1" over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again that I can take. What I do love about the game is the fantastic open world, a real visual treat - the one thing Ubi does very well.

ACV just seems....more of the same in a new skin and location. If I do end up getting it (which I will only do for the complete edition at a sale price) then it will be just to explore the scenery and not bother with the main story or any side missions.